Tag Archives: Natural Gas

Fossil Fuel Development in the Arctic is a Bad Investment

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Source: www.earth-policy.org

>”Currently, about 10 percent of the world’s oil and one-quarter of its natural gas production come from the Arctic region, which has warmed by more than 2 degrees Celsius since the mid-1960s. Countries that border the Arctic Ocean are staking claims to expand their rights beyond the traditional 200-mile exclusive economic zone in anticipation of future oil and gas prospects. According to current estimates, the United States has the largest Arctic oil resources, both on and offshore. Russia comes in second for oil, but it has the most natural gas. Norway and Greenland are virtually tied for third largest combined oil and gas resources. Canada comes in fifth, with almost equal parts oil and natural gas.

In developing these resources, Russia is leading the pack. Production has started at almost all of the 43 large oil and natural gas fields that have been discovered in the Russian Arctic, both on land and offshore. Russia drew its first oil from an offshore rig in Arctic waters in December 2013. […]

[…] operating in the Arctic brings great risks. The shrinking Arctic sea iceallows waves to become more powerful. The remaining ice can be more easily broken up into ice floes that can collide with vessels or drilling platforms. Large icebergs can scour the ocean floor, bursting pipes or other buried infrastructure. Much of the onshore infrastructure is built on permafrost—frozen ground—that can shift as the ground thaws from regional warming, threatening pipe ruptures. Already, official Russian sources estimate that there have been more than 20,000 oil spills annually from pipelines across Russia in recent years.  Arctic operations are far away from major emergency response support. The freezing conditions make it unsafe for crews to be outside for extended periods of time. Even communication systems are less reliable at the far end of the Earth. Why take such risks to pursue these dirty fuels when alternatives to oil and gas are there for the taking?

Rather than searching for new ways to get oil, we can look for better ways to move people and goods. Bus rapid transit, light rail and high-speed rail can move more people for less energy than a car can. And for the cars that remain on the road, electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles—powered by a clean energy grid—are much more efficient than those with a traditional internal combustion engine. Encouraging bicycle use through bike lanes andbike-sharing programs gets people active and out of cars.

Natural gas, which is mainly used to produce electricity, can be replaced with power generated by wind, solar, and geothermal projects. Many countries are demonstrating what is possible with renewables. Denmark already gets one-third of its electricity from wind. Australia is now dotted with 1 million rooftop solar systems. Iceland generates enough geothermal power to meet close to 30 percent of its electricity needs. These are just a few examples of looking past the old familiar solution to a better cleaner one. The risky search under every rock and iceberg for oil and gas deposits is a costly distraction from investing in a clean energy future.”<

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Renewable Geothermal Power Expands in Nevada

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Geothermal energy is a growing industry, with more plants going into Nevada’s mostly untapped resource.

Source: www.ktvn.com

Geothermal energy is a growing type of clean energy, and nowhere is that more true than in Nevada. Ormat Technologies has built a geothermal plant every year since 2005.  […]

“This is what the future is going to bring,” Gawell said. “You will see more and more of this in years ahead and it is already a boom for Reno.”

The Steamboat Complex is a binary plant that takes hot water from deep underground, to produce power.

“We convert the heat that’s in the fluid to electrical energy,” Bob Sullivan, Senior Vice President of Ormat Technologies said. “Then we put all the fluids back into the ground where it gets reheated. So, it’s a sustainable cycle.”  […]

Along with electricity, these facilities create economic development, putting hundreds of people to work, drilling wells and building the plants.   About 500 people have permanent jobs with Ormat, in the United States.  Another 500 people work for the company around the world.

“It’s a job engine,” Sullivan said. “It takes a lot of maintenance. It takes a lot of people. It takes a lot of workers, a lot of subcontractors to keep one of these facilities running.”

While the cost of fossil fuels goes up and down, geothermal stays steady. The fuel cost is upfront, in the form of drilling wells. Gawell says what is lost in capital and labor costs is saved in fuel costs. […]”<

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Fracking linked to BC’s liquefied natural gas gambit

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A surplus of natural gas in North America explains why the B.C. government is so desperate to launch a new industry

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>“The prices that the [B.C.] government is looking at in paving the roads with gold is basically based on these short-term factors that are not likely to persist,” Lee said.

Natural Gas Development Minister Rich Coleman did not make himself available for an interview to respond to Lee’s comments.

B.C. misread U.S. energy revolution

The B.C. government missed the mark with its earlier forecasts on royalties because it failed to predict an explosion in U.S. energy production.

This largely came about through hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as “fracking”, and horizontal drilling. Technological innovations in fracking generated huge new supplies, causing North American natural-gas prices to plummet.

The falling prices resulted in fewer royalties flowing into the B.C. government treasury.

Fracking involves pumping huge amounts of water along with sand and chemicals into shale-rock formations to free trapped gas.

Horizontal drilling enables companies to retrieve locked supplies by moving the drill bit across a deposit rather than going straight down.

A single platform can send horizontal drills in a multitude of directions, enhancing efficiency and saving money.

In his 2013 book, The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters (Penguin), Gregory Zuckerman chronicled how a handful of U.S. energy-industry outcasts refined these techniques and caused an American energy revolution.

“To me, it’s fascinating that this resurgence started in 2007 and 2008, which is right when America was sort of on its back,” he told the Straight by phone.

Zuckerman, a Wall Street Journal reporter, said that the United States is now producing about eight million barrels of oil per day, up from five million barrels per day in 2008.

In addition, U.S. natural-gas production rose more than 21 percent between 2008 and 2013.

ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has predicted that the U.S. will be energy self-sufficient by 2020.

The Frackers reveals that the people who spearheaded this sharp increase in energy production were not working for major oil companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, or Chevron.

Rather, they were an assortment of little-known wildcatters from Texas and Oklahoma—George Mitchell, Aubrey McClendon, Tom Ward, and Harold Hamm—who became billionaires as a result.

They crisscrossed areas with shale reserves, buying drilling rights from property owners. Although there has been a lot of howling from environmentalists about the contamination of water supplies with fracking chemicals, the industry continues to grow.

“Everyone focuses on fracking—and fracking is key, as is horizontal drilling—but the most important thing is that innovators like Mitchell got it to work in shale, which everyone kind of ignored, especially the big guys and the experts,” Zuckerman said.

By targeting shale, Zuckerman maintained, Mitchell changed the country and the world.

That’s because manufacturers with high natural-gas input costs—such as makers of chemicals, tires, cement, and aluminum—are basing operations in the United States because of the low natural-gas prices. And Zuckerman said that this will give the U.S. a competitive advantage against other countries for years to come.

“Some economists say as many as two million jobs are going to be created,” he stated.<

See on www.straight.com

Geothermal Energy: Superior to Natural Gas for Powering the Electrical Grid

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Geothermal resources provide about 3,440 MW of power to the United States electrical grid as of early 2014.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>”In a recent report, the Geothermal Energy Association explored geothermal power’s unique values that make it essential to the U.S. energy mix.  These plants have the same important baseload qualities coal now provides for over two thirds of the electric power generation in the nation.  Geothermal can be a high-value substitute for baseload fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, providing firm, clean power 24 hours a day regardless of extraneous conditions.

“As state and national policies move to significantly reduce climate changing power emissions, geothermal is a baseload clean energy that can replace baseload fossil fuels at a minimum cost to the power system,” says Karl Gawell, GEA’s executive director.

Gawell explains that as the grid uses more variable energy resources, which it most certainly will, the flexibility of geothermal energy is an attribute that regulators are still learning about.  “Flexible geothermal can help firm the system, allowing for imbalance, and is able to provide supplemental reserve,” he adds.

The U.S. continues to make strides toward a cleaner energy mix largely through wind and solar contracts to meet goals of state Renewable Portfolio Standards. This creates a greater need for firming power, and although geothermal can provide this as well, it could get lost in the mix if natural gas becomes a fallback to offset intermittency.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama called natural gas “the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.” Geothermal energy, too, provides the same stabilizing function as natural gas and comes with unique environmental and economic ancillary benefits. Ancillary services support the transmission of electricity from a supplier to a purchaser and include scheduling and dispatch, reactive power and voltage control, loss compensation, load following, system protection, and energy imbalance.

A geothermal plant can be engineered to optimize these services. In most geothermal plants built today, operators can increase or decrease the amount of power being generated in order to match load requirements — such as making up for gaps caused by intermittency.   Geothermal energy and natural gas play a similar role to the power grid with the capability to dispatch, or to change a facility’s power output by ramping up or down depending on system needs.”<

See on www.renewableenergyworld.com

Bakken Oil: North Dakota flaring burns 4 times Total National Consumption (2011 figure)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil drillers in North Dakota’s Bakken shale fields are allowing nearly a third of the natural gas they drill to burn off into the air, with a value of more than $100 million per month,…

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

An alarming state of affairs.  As per the article the flared Natural gas in North Dakota is reported to be 266,000,000,000 cfd (cubic feet per day) flared methane or 2750 x 10(9) cu m/year.

According to Wiki the 2011 US annual consumption for natural gas was 689.9 x 10(9) cu m, so apparently Bakken is actually burning 4 times the total 2011 national requirements.

>Roughly 29 percent of natural gas extracted in North Dakota was flared in May, down from an all-time high of 36 percent in September 2011. But the volume of natural gas produced has nearly tripled in that timeframe to about 900,000 million cubic feet per day, boosting flaring in the state to roughly 266,000 million cubic feet per day, according to North Dakota state and Ceres data.<

See on www.reuters.com

Water-Smart Power: Strengthening the U.S. Electricity System in a Warming World (2013) | UCSUSA

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This report shows how the U.S. can build an electricity system that protects our water resources and dramatically reduces global warming emissions.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The country stands at a critical crossroads. Many aging, water-intensive power plants are nearing the end of their lives. The choices we make to replace them will determine the water and climate implications of our electricity system for decades to come.

Today’s electricity system cannot meet our needs in a future of growing demand for power, worsening strains on water resources, and an urgent need to mitigate climate change.

[…]

Energy-water collisions are happening now, and are poised to worsen in a warming world

  • The heat waves and drought that hit the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 shined a harsh light on the vulnerability of the U.S. power sector to extreme weather, and revealed water-related electricity risks across the country.
  • When plants cannot get enough cooling water, they must cut back or completely shut down their generators, as happened in 2011 and 2012 at plants around the country.
  • Nationally, the 2012 drought was the worst in half a century. Amid soaring temperatures in the Midwest, several power plant operators got permission to discharge exceptionally hot water rather than reduce power output.
  • Electricity-water collisions are poised to worsen in a warming world as the power sector helps drive climate change. Extreme weather conditions that have historically been outliers are expected to become standard fare.<

See on www.ucsusa.org

Glut of Natural gas squeezes biofuel market

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Farm Power Northwest has built five anaerobic digesters in Oregon and Washington in recent years, but the brothers who founded the company say the outlook for new projects has lost its luster.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The Mount Vernon, Wash.-based company, founded by brothers Daryl and Kevin Maas, uses manure from dairy farms to create methane gas, then burns it in generators and sells the resulting electricity to power utilities.

[…]

While power utilities paid up to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour several years ago for digester-produced electricity, the rate has now fallen to 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, said Kevin Maas.

The reason is the price of natural gas — a common fuel for electrical generation — has plummeted as domestic production has skyrocketed. Natural gas is now trading at below $4 per thousand cubic feet, compared with nearly $13 per thousand cubic feet in 2008.

That’s because new technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has greatly increased the amount of natural gas that can be economically extracted from the ground.

With the cost of natural gas so much lower, other energy feedstocks like biogas from digesters become less competitive, experts say.<

See on www.capitalpress.com